Foods & Feeding

FEEDING – Marbled Crayfish love a variety of natural foods. One of their favorite is live snails. If you have a “snail problem” in any aquarium, simply run a net on the aquarium glass where the snails live and breed; and empty the net of snails into the Marbled Cray tank. This is very healthy for the crays, whose diet otherwise is vegetarian. They love to live plants from your local pet store – Anacharis and Cabomba are favorites. Algae tabs are good! You can actually affect the color of your crays by the foods you feed them – turning whole crays green, red, etc based on the food you feed them. “Color Flakes” contain these ingredients, like Spirulina and Astaxanthin. Sliced CUCUMBERS are a big favorite – sink them with the lead weights which come with aquarium plants, but tend to make the tank dirty more quickly than other foods.

Marbled Crayfish are not cannibals and unlike other cray species, do not attack each other alive. They will eat their own molting shell and will sometimes eat a dead specimen. They will sometimes pull a claw off in a territory battle, but are again basically vegetarian and leave each other alone when fed properly. If your crays are attacking each other to kill and eat one another, chances are good that you have something that is not a true Marmorkrebs – or you are starving them.

The statements provided in this website reflect the personal experience of the owner, not the results of academic research per se.